I ask because I have an odd problem. I'm dealing with two networks, each starting with the first 8 characters but ending differently. Think "blahblah" and "blahblah (unencrypted)".

It seems that whether or not netcfg works in this situation is a crapshoot. Sometimes, especially when only the encrypted network is strong, the unencrypted profile simply fails over and over again, telling me that I'm sending out the wrong WPA pass. In the other case, when I'm passing the correct WPA info, it seems I'm getting rejected, perhaps from the encrypted network. What especially arouses my suspicion is that wifi-select -- even when I only have an unencrypted profile -- never acknowledges it, and claims hand made profiles only exist for the shorter named encrypted network.

Do I have something very odd going on, or is netcfg only actually referencing the first 8 characters of an essid (or hashes thereof)?